On The Bridge (13 page)

The house was dead quiet, apart from his grandfather’s snoring far off in his room. Doug felt sorry for his poor grandmother having to sleep next to the human lawnmower. Against the wall was a mounted lamp with embroidery he used to find fascinating as a child. He switched it on to be able to see his way to the kitchen, just enough as not to alert anyone to his presence there.

In the impending anger of the weather Doug entered the kitchen. The small side room with the laundry had a few towels lying around and they were all the same red shade, his grandma’s favourite colour. He was only too thankful for it and he took the one at the very top of the pile, wiped himself down quickly and decided to hunt for a snack from the left-overs in the fridge. After the eerie dream the young man was famished, and on this farm one thing was certain – there was always too much food.

He opened the fridge door and the chilled air breathed on his bare feet, the little pale lamp inside making the perfect light for a stealthy feast.

“The coke is finished?” he said to himself, astonished. It was mother’s milk to him and he longed for that bubbling burn down his throat, but he was unlucky this time. There was only ginger beer as an alternative and he loathed the vile concoction of raisins and sugar water. What on earth were people thinking, drinking that stuff? Especially now that there were real drinks to be had and he reluctantly decided instead to fill himself with plain old water.

He tip-toed and opened the tap, hoping not to rouse anyone. The clear water glistening in the trickle of light soothed his eyes and he lifted the glass to his mouth. He turned to lay out his own little midnight feast on the kitchen table. Doug placed the glass on the table and piled up an unhealthy combination of meats and starches to sate his hunger.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said in his best fake French accent, “tonight’s main course will be served by Chef Douglas the Magnifique!”

He didn’t know any French, no, but he amused himself that he did.

Doug grinned with satisfaction as he sat down to lay into the delicious plate of food and thought of Thompson and his insatiable appetite, about to be challenged. He smiled as he stuffed himself merrily in the rumble of the weather and the wonderful solitude away from leering parents and watchful grandfolks. This was his feast. Alone sat the young king at his own buffet, eating as badly as he wanted, crunching and chewing to his heart’s delight and enjoying the seemingly trivial freedom that these things presented children under the rule of their parents.

Chewing like a hound, Douglas noticed that the kitchen was so quiet, it may well have been in another dimension from the rest of the house. Even the thundering sky hushed as the cold air flooded his skin. The drop in temperature had Doug concerned that the open fridge door could cause it to break, but it was not the fridge making the room cold. It was not the freezer’s ice that chilled his body to the core as he sat in the dusky kitchen.

As he looked down to pick out his food, two ghastly hands took hold of his wrists. Doug momentarily froze in fear, knowing that this was real. He dared not pry his hands from its grip for fear of the consequences and when he finally looked up the dead man was sitting right there opposite him, holding his hands down.

The dead man smiled with his head lolled to the side and Doug could not catch his breath as the malicious face leaned forward. The phantom opened its ghastly mouth and uttered one soft word that sounded much like the deafening buzzing of bees captured within a whisper.

“Doug.”

Doug dropped the glass as he jerked wildly to free himself of the hellish thing that haunted his reality more than his dreams. The glass fell slowly to the floor as the chair gave way. The stunned teenager stumbled backwards on his heels to get some distance between him and the ghost, but he collapsed onto the floor, sending everything on the table to the ground with a mighty clash. Doug screamed, and he could not stop screaming, endlessly flailing his limbs on the loose mat by the sink in his futile attempt to escape. With eyes petrified staring at the ceiling above him, his voice filled the quiet night like a shriek from an expelled banshee. The sound broke through the veil of silence and woke the entire house.

Upstairs, his grandparents jumped out of their bed, immediately getting their reading lamps on and Lonnie
leapt from his bed like a young spry man and reached in under his chest of drawers, frantically fanning his arms and cussing under his breath, still half asleep. The farmer, who still had within him the skills of a soldier, grabbed his shotgun and loaded it.

“Stay here, I think we have burglars to deal with,” he commanded his wife.

But she would not hear of it.

“Are you crazy? I’m not staying in here alone while my family is out there, dammit!” Betsy whispered aggressively and opened her wardrobe door to arm herself with a baseball bat she kept there for just such an occasion.

The thunder pelted the mountain pinnacles, exacerbating the state of all the occupants in the house and Jean and Norman flew out of their room to see if their son was okay. They did not consider burglars right away, but they knew something wicked was afoot.

Everybody now came running, scared from their slumber by the cry. They raced down to aid the troubled boy. They ran into the living room first, checking the house as they went and finally found him alone in the kitchen. He sat on the floor in a pool of broken glass and water, his body shaking viciously as he sobbed, abandoning all acts and charades as to his well-being. He cried hysterically with his face in his hands.

Doug wished he was blind. He never wanted to see that again and he was done pretending.

“I told you I saw some bad behind his eyes, Lonnie,” Doug’s grandmother whispered to her gun-toting husband.

“Do you believe me now?”

“Give him a sedative, will you?” Norman asked Jean and for once it was not in judgement, but genuine concern.

They gave him something to sleep, sitting with him and keeping to hushed small talk to make him feel calmer. Jean turned on the TV and made herself and her mother some coffee to sit with Doug. He gradually calmed down, even though not a moment went by that he did not relive the grotesque smile of the dead thing. As the sedative kicked in, the shaken boy calmed and slipped into a deep sleep.

In the morning, Doug stirred. Lonnie
watched him from the sun room where he had been sitting since the boy’s midnight ordeal. He could not sleep. The state of his grandson greatly concerned him and he waited for the dawn to light up his surroundings. He lit his pipe when the sun rays penetrated the large rows of windows that served as walls. It was a small greenhouse, in effect, having a myriad of small potted plants around the two bamboo couches on pedestals of varying heights.

The air was still crisp and the windows hazy when he puffed away on his first dose for the day and he watched the boy with a stern eye. He had seen things like this before, even had his own night terrors once or twice before as a lad. The men in his company in the Second World War acted out like that sometimes, when traumatised by the heinous acts they had to commit in the war. They’d wake up screaming, claiming they had seen family members who had been dead for a long time; some would see men and women they had killed. Now this child, his own grandson, was under the hand of the same devil.

Doug opened his eyes slightly and tried to turn his head, but the bright light caught him off guard and he immediately looked the other way. His tall grandfather came over to him, sat on the sofa next to him and put one arm around his shoulders.

Doug turned so that his head was on his grandfather’s chest. The upset of the previous night came back to him, and with it his helplessness. His parents now saw it first-hand, what had vexed him, and there was no doubt that there would be another cruel inquisition to make him feel inadequate and frail. The boy began to sob uncontrollably. The old man just held him without saying anything until his crying finally ceased into light gasps of composure.

Then he said, “Doug, I think there’s been a lot going on that you haven’t told your folks. I understand that. Sometimes your folks are the hardest people to talk to, you know. There were lots I didn’t tell my dad either. But really it would be much better for all of us if you opened up. Better for you as well as us. Keeping things bottled up always leads to trouble. Do you think you could tell me?”

Doug loved Lonnie deeply and knew for sure that his grandfather loved him. They’d spent many happy days together on the farm on weekends and when his folks went on trips they didn’t think Doug would enjoy. Sometimes they just took him to the farm when they’d be too busy to look after him.

In the kitchen, Betsy had put the kettle on. Her husband had not returned to bed and she knew why. It was a good thing, she thought, that Doug would wake to see his grandfather first of anyone else.

Perhaps she should have given her man a hearty
“I told you so”
, but she thought it better to let him deal with this. Rather him than Norman. The guy loved his son, but he had a lot to learn about tact. He had a sure lack of compassion in her opinion.

With cold hands she fixed her overcoat and started the eggs on her black coal stove. She tried to hear what Doug and her husband were discussing, but the clatter of the frying eggs killed any words she tried to decipher.

It looked successful enough, though, from where she stood. At least the child was talking now.

Snuggled in his grandfather’s arms, Doug felt safer than he did anywhere else in the world. He loved the farm smells that permeated in his grandfather’s clothes: the smell of cows and horses, hay and fresh manure.

“I know,” he sniffed, “but it’s hard.”

“I know it’s hard, my boy, but if there is anything…”

Doug just started talking. His heart was brimming with it and he could not contain it anymore. And so he told Lonnie everything from the beginning, including the bits he’d never told his friends.

After he spilled it all between sobs of sorrow and gasps of hopelessness, it was a relief that his grandfather didn’t shout at him when he finished, but just held him tighter and said, “You’ve been through a very hard time. I’m really sorry. But I think I can assure you that it’s over. It was mistake to stop taking your medicine. Your mind hadn’t had time to heal from the trauma of witnessing that suicide, my boy, so naturally you started to have hallucinations.”

The shivering boy remained quiet in his arms.

“All those times when you thought you saw this dead man alive - those were either dreams or hallucinations. He was never here at the farm, how could he have been? He was never at your house, how could he have been? None of that really happened except in your mind.”

His grandfather’s voice was old and deep and when he spoke it would feel as if he moved right through Doug, the vibration of his talking very comforting.

“If you promise me with your hand on your heart that you will start taking your pills again and keep on taking them until your doctor tells you to stop, I promise you that you will never see him again. Will you promise?”

Doug put his hand on his heart and said, “I promise. But granddad, will I ever be entirely okay? Will I have to take pills forever? I thought I was quite a happy boy before this. Will I ever be completely happy again?”

“Of course you will,” Lonnie assured him with a hearty sm
ile and a light tap on his back. “In few weeks it will be as if this never happened.”

Doug’s granddad kissed him on the forehead and said, “I promise.” After a moment holding Doug tightly, Lonnie stood up. “Can I tell your father and mother what you’ve told me?”

“Dad will shout at me!”

The old man paused for a moment, contemplating the outcome.

“I’m afraid that’s true, but unless you tell him yourself, there’s no other way to put the situation right. I think he’ll take it better from me,” he winked. “And, Doug, don’t judge him too severely. He’s been confused and frightened and feels helpless, and that’s a combination that makes even the mildest and kindest of men shout.”

It was something he heard before. Doug gave a long sigh. “Okay, granddad, you tell him.”

The boy was actually relieved a little to be voided of the responsibility. It felt as if Granddad was his attorney and all he had to do was show up. Someone else would do the hard work for him.

With a heavy demeanour, the old man went upstairs.

“Norman, you awake?”

The door of the guest room opened.

“Morning. I’m awake but I’m exhausted. Didn’t sleep much after having been woken like that last night,” Norman complained.

“Well, I think I should enlighten the two of you about what really happened. It’s not a light matter, I think, and I think it would be best if it could be addressed before it gets worse,” the old man said wisely and leaned against the doorway.

“It can get worse?” Norman said in his cocky tone of voice.

“I’m afraid so, Norman. Let’s go have a sit down. Both of you. Come,” and he walked them into his room and sat them on his bed. Doug could hear the door shut behind his grandfather and he waited. He was filled with a tense anxiety similar to that of a cancer patient waiting for results.

When his father-in-law told Norman what Doug had told him, he went ballistic. It was an insult not to be consulted about Doug’s medication, for one. He was livid and embarrassed by what he considered weakness on his son’s part, somehow tying it all to himself and his self-proclaimed problems with parenting an unruly teenager. Now it was spilling over onto his in-laws, making it a family matter that went over his authority.

Before Lonnie could stop him, he jerked open the door, practically foaming at the mouth. He came rushing downstairs and started shouting at Doug.

“You stupid little idiot! Who told you to stop taking your pills? It was those idiotic friends of yours, wasn’t it?” he hollered in his usual tone.

He had conveniently forgotten, of course, that he had told Doug right in the beginning that he didn’t need them.

“We’re going home right now, and I’m going to lock you in your room where I can keep an eye on you. You’ll take your pills if I have to push them down your throat with my fingers,” the monster in Norman seeped through in his son’s eyes again and he wished he had never told anyone all over again.

Jean came into the room but said nothing. Her eyes fell on her fretful son and how his eyes were filled with terror at the onslaught of his father. She wished she could reach out and grab him away from his spot, where his father had him pinned, but she knew that when Norman was in this kind of temper, there was no use trying to reason with him.

Lonnie, on the other hand, appalled at how badly his telling Norman the truth had turned out, made an attempt.

“Now, Norman, just cool down a moment. Are you sure this is the best way to handle it?”

Norman just turned on him and said, “You keep out of this. He’s not your child. And anyway you’ve made enough trouble already.”

“Norman,” Jean warned, using her gaze to remind Norman that he was speaking to her father.

“No, Jean, we are leaving and that’s that. Come!”

Then he rushed up the stairs to pack, almost dragging Jean with him. Once the door was slammed behind them, Doug and his grandparents could hear the two go at it and they remained still in awkward silence, just passing glances with disappointed expressions.

“Come, dear, let’s get some breakfast into you before you leave,” Betsy said and tapped lightly on his shoulder.

“I’m really not hungry, grandma,” he said, filled with misery and feeling rather sick. “I can never eat when they fight like this. And always about me. I am nothing but trouble,” he started whimpering again.

Doug was just sitting on the couch crying and once again his eternally loyal grandfather sat beside him and said, “Doug I’m sorrier than I can say your dad’s reacted this way. He was more in a dither than I thought. Just try to ignore what he says until he’s had time to think things over.”

“What did I tell you? I told you he’d blow his gasket. Now I just know I am going to pay for this,” Doug whispered and wiped his tears off with his pyjama sleeve.

“I have to go and pack my stuff, before I get punished for being lazy too,” Doug moaned and kept his eyes on the ground.

He got up to pack, head bowed and looking terribly distraught. Jean’s parents looked at one another and had a quiet conversation in unspoken words. The horrible screaming match upstairs started to die down word for word and eventually there was just angry silence. When Norman and Jean came downstairs, nobody said anything to anybody. There was just an awkward silence between them all.

Jean hugged her father and mouthed “I’m sorry.” She was afraid if she said it out loud, it would make Norman angrier than ever. If only he could stay behind, Doug wished.

As they went out the door, Doug gave Lonnie a quick hug and then followed behind, head still down, dragging his overnight case on the ground.